Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys, CBE, born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams, was a mid-20th-century novelist who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica, though she was mainly resident in England from the age of 16. She is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea, written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 August 1894
lioness circus
I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness...
rain sunset rivers
I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness. She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.
life fun dark
We can't all be happy, we can't all be rich, we can't all be lucky - and it would be so much less fun if we were... There must be the dark background to show up the bright colours.
sometimes life-is melancholy
Everything tender and melancholy - as life is sometimes, just for one moment.
goes-on able illusion
Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.
rags illusion knows
...I know all about myself now, I know. You've told me so often. You haven't left me one rag of illusion to clothe myself in.
beautiful fall long
You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone. We are alone in the most beautiful place in the world...
hurt party thinking
I think that the desire to be cruel and to hurt (with words because any other way might be dangerous to ourself) is part of human nature. Parties are battles (most parties), a conversation is a duel (often). Everybody's trying to hurt first, to get in the dig that will make him or her feel superior, feel triumph.
writing rivers lakes
All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.
hurt long people
I long to be ... Like Other People! The extraordinary, ungetatable, oddly cruel Other People, with their way of wantonly hurting and then accusing you of being thin-skinned, sulky, vindictive or ridiculous.
rooms
A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That's all any room is.
real acceptance real-truth
I am the only real truth I know.
matter littles ridiculous
I've been so ridiculous all my life that a little bit more or a little bit less hardly matters now.
friday sunday weekend
The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.